With something drifting and something shifting, the earth still held the sky.

Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Sweet Endings

Last
night, my mother, her maid, and I went off for a late night coffee. (Since this
is Pune, and in Pune –BANER – late night was ten-thirty.) We’d earlier made a
trip to DMart which is never a pleasant experience. I don’t understand those
plastic tabs they tie around the zipper of a purse. Some purses, like mum’s, is
put inside a dark carry bag and then
a plastic tab is tied around the zipper. (Because they know how we are – so
ready to steal everything that’s decrepit and nauseous...or, as they call it at
DMart – inventory.)

Once
inside, you go on a rather inconvenient treasure hunt to find sugar, flour,
rice, and salt. These items, which are routinely bought, are tucked away in
some corner of the store that even rats have written off as remote. At easy
access, though, are sauces and ketchup bottles that were manufactured during
the ketchup boom – that golden period when they were used in Mithun’s movies as
fake blood. Also to be found as soon as
you enter are various kinds of custard powders, other than the plain,
simple, regular one, of course.( For any condiment or dessert mix that does not
have elaichi, mango, or ‘zaffran’, one needs to write a petition to DMart
owners and get it signed by 100 people.) You may also find some refugee-spirit
infused vegetables. Although, I’m not sure if they can be called ‘vegetables’
if they are in that state of soft mulch that remind you of an earthworm’s insides
(or outsides, for that matter).

DMart
keeps things exciting by giving its staff excellent training on the
disappearing act. If you cannot find the sugar or milk, you decide to look
around. You think you will find a staff member who wears a vest the color of
old blood stain. He or she will have a badge saying ‘Can I help you?’ You will
sweetly ask, “Where’s the milk?”You
will be told where the milk is. You will go to the specified aisle, get the
milk with the happy cow on it, and smile to yourself. That’s what you think
would happen. But you are a stupid lout for thinking that way and DMart ensures
that such loutism does not go unpunished.

Instead,
this is what will really happen.

You
will remember that you need milk just as it’s your turn at the till. Your mum
will ask you if there is milk at home. (The tone will suggest that there isn’t
so you can’t fake an answer.) You tell her to start billing the other items while
you pick up a carton of milk instead. You get into the aisle that says ‘Milk
Products’. You won’t find it there. You try another aisle that says ‘Dairy’ and
wonder why that’s not a part of ‘Milk Products’ or vice versa. Here you will
find towels instead. You may take a moment to snicker. You’ve just conjured up,
in your mind, an image of Cleopatra bathing in water but toweling herself in a
Turkish wrap that secretes asses’ milk. Since you will be giggling to yourself at
this point, people around you will move away a little. You still haven’t found
the milk. So you decide to ask the staff.

You
turn to the left and you turn to the right. You think you see them behind bottles
of Coke a few meters away. You dash there but instead find an aunty heaving a
watermelon. You swivel around when you think you’ve spotted a blob of red from
the corner of your eye. You dash there too. You run like the wind. You are
alone and helpless. You are, in fact, Vidya Balan in Kahani.

Alas,
no staff.

Your
head’s in a tizzy. You get worried for your mother who will be lost and lonely
without you (whilst trying to shove aside the reality that she’ll be sipping
lemonade at the stall outside, chatting up someone).

By
now, you start seeing splotches of that maroon-brown-red everywhere. You run
here and there. You even pass the aisle that has…gasp…milk. But you are so
feverishly obsessed with locating the staff that what you needed the staff for
is not important anymore.

All
in all, you lose. You won’t get the milk. You will have to buy it from the
nearby dairy.

Anyhoo.
Back to the late night coffee.

I
was in such a sullen mood after the experience that I even said no to fried
potatoes for dinner. Mum got really worried and asked me if I had constipation.
(Now, this is a very odd thing with my family – close and extended. The
diagnosis for everything boils down to bowel movement. I suppose it shouldn’t
be surprising since the panacea for everything boils down to food. If ingestion
is a big part of mental make-up, can excretion be far behind?)

I
said no. She suggested we head out for a drive and maybe get some coffee
somewhere. For ideas and plans like this, I love Linger On. I absolutely adore
that café. It’s small and cute, their coffees are good, their masala chai is excellent, and their food
– well, not a lot of places do tofu as well as they do. They have books and
board games, helpful staff that help tide over the slow service, and good
music.

We
went there and mum spotted a Snakes and Ladders game. The three of us played
and I won! Also, because we were the last customers, Linger On gave us a slab
of Kiwi cheesecake to sample.

We
sat there chatting. Mum suggested we try making the cheesecake at home. To do
this, we’ll need a lot stuff that we’ll have to get from DMart. (How we can
expect to get kiwi in a place where laukis
are thrown in the ‘Exotic Vegetables’ section is beyond me.) I pretended not to
listen and browsed through ‘Surviving Men’ instead.

The
shutters came down and as we left, we saw a thin, silver moon in the sky.

Some
days take you through so much crap. But they bid you goodnight in style and you
wait to do it all over again.